


In the Dumps

by thebearking



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, First Meetings, Gender-neutral Reader, Hurt Peter Parker, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mutant Reader, Other, POV Peter Parker, POV Second Person, Precious Peter Parker, Pyrokinetic Reader, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, he's been spidey for a while, he's in his 20s, peter is an adult in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 11:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebearking/pseuds/thebearking
Summary: You find Spider-Man passed out in your dumpster.





	In the Dumps

**Author's Note:**

> ahh spider-man is one of my favorite superheroes! like it's one thing to be my favorite character but to be my favorite hero? that's an accomplishment. i actually rly liked the amazing spider-man movies and i ADORED homecoming. anyway here's something i wrote for peter, a very adult peter, btw. i picture him to be in his early to mid twenties here, as well as the reader. in this one, the reader (gender unspecified) is a vigilante known as the inferno. enjoy! this is my first time writing for my boy so please let me know if i captured him decently.

A nice, carb-loaded, garlicky alfredo pasta had seemed like a great idea at the time. Now that your craving was fulfilled, all the pasta was good for was stinking up your entire apartment. When you decided the smell had become too much, you forced yourself off of the couch, slid into your sandal slippers, took the trash bag out of the can, and headed downstairs to take out the garbage. Bear, your beefy blue pitbull, barked when you shut the door before he could follow, whining when you went down the hall. You rolled your eyes; he was such a big baby, even if he was _your_ baby.

It was cold outside, but you were warm enough in your T-shirt and flannel pants. Being the Inferno meant little fear of the winter on your part. It was the summers that inconvenienced you; wearing little clothing and wrangling your thick hair up into a bun at the top of your head could only do so much to cool you off. On this chilly night in November, it was comforting to see your breath hover in the air in a cloud of fog, even if you were next to a green container of trash. You threw open the lid—

And found Spider-Man in your dumpster.

 _“Shit!”_ You didn’t scream but you did gasp, leaping back and grabbing at your chest as if that would slow your frenzied heartbeat. If you’d been wearing pearls, they would have been clutched. You took several breaths, fighting to calm yourself down. Spider-Man was in your trash. He was lying in trash and you’d seen him. What were the chances of that? Was he planning on staying in the trash can all night?

“Shit, shit, shit, what—why. Why is he—okay. One more time.” You crept forward to the dumpster again and when you opened the roof, he was still there, in all his red and blue suited glory. He was unconscious, but breathing, and he was covered in deep scratches. Claw marks? Who had he fought? He looked like he’d lost. Or maybe he’d just exhausted himself during the fight and was looking for somewhere close by to sleep. His suit was tattered in countless places, but his mask remained intact, much to his benefit, you supposed. Unlike Stark, he fought to keep his identity hidden. You could relate. You’d never met the Spider-Man, only heard of him. You remembered watching the stories on the news back in high school, back when you had just started to control your powers. In a way, Spider-Man had inspired your own vigilante-ism, though you’d never tell him that.

You wanted so badly to just toss your trash inside and run away, pretend you never saw anything, but then you put yourself in his situation. If you’d been passed out in a dumpster, beaten and bleeding, you would have wanted someone to find you and give you a much more comfortable and secreted place to stay. So, cursing your empathetic tendencies, you pushed the lid back with enough force to keep it open, balanced on the—handles? they must have been handles—and leaned over to grab Spider-Man by the underarms. It was difficult; this precarious position coupled with the exertion of pulling out an unexpectedly heavy superhero meant every muscle in your body was working in overdrive. Your legs trembled but you finally succeeded, hauling Spider-Man out of the dumpster and accidentally dropping him onto the concrete.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, Spidey,” you found yourself saying, hopping off of the dumpster handle. Before you could forget, you finally chucked your own trash in before closing the lid once more. You looked him over, searching for any broken bones, making sure his chest rose and fell like you’d seen earlier. He was still alive. Now you had to keep him that way. There might be a couple wounds you could cauterize with your own hands, but it looked like stitches were in order. You hoped your sewing skills had improved over the last month. You were used to patching yourself up; this was bound to be easier. Probably.

It was even harder to figure out a way of carrying Spider-Man that would work for the both of you. You decided that dragging him inside the same way you dragged him out of the dumpster, but there was no way you could carry him up the stairs.

Time for the elevator.

The ride up to your floor in such a rickety old thing was increasing your anxiety by tenfold. As soon as the doors opened, you were out of the elevator, lugging his lanky body over to your door. Bear was all over him when you entered the apartment, jumping and yipping, sniffing at Spider-Man inquisitively. He kept the sleeping man company while you looked for an old blanket to put under him on the sofa. By the time you got him onto the couch in a suitable position for both him and for you, you were drained.

“Bear, stop,” you grumbled, shooing the dog away. You looked back at Spider-Man and realized you would have to do the unthinkable: you were going to have to unmask him.

“Sorry, Spidey,” you apologized again. “I promise I’m a friend.” And with that, you reached over and tugged the mask off, baring his face to you.

It was a nice face. You tried—and failed—not to stare. Messy brown hair, long lashes, upturned nose. His lip was caked with dried blood, and he was sporting a shiner on his left eye. You’d forgotten that he was your age and not the stringy teenager he’d been years earlier. This was no boy. This was a man. A young man, but a man, nevertheless.

You cleared your throat and returned to the task at hand. You were going to need to get him out of the suit, which meant you were going to see even more of him, which meant you were going to need to focus. Bear barked, calling you back to the present, and you sighed, preparing yourself for a long, long night.

* * *

It was the whimpering that woke Peter up. He opened his eyes to find himself in an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar couch, with an unfamiliar dog staring up at him from its dog bed.

What the hell.

He remembered taking on a couple lizard mutants. He remembered losing to said lizard mutants. But what he couldn’t remember was how he’d ended up here.

He sat up, hissing in pain when his head began to throb, and shut his eyes, clutching his temples. A concussion. He’d had one before; this wasn’t as a bad, but it was enough to bother him. Slowly, he opened his eyes and took a moment to look himself over. He was shirtless, his lower half covered in a fleece throw patterned with snowflakes. His chest was bandaged; he could remember claws tearing through his suit, and teeth sinking into his ribs. There was gauze taped to him all over. He peeked under the blanket and found that he was wearing pants, but they weren’t his pants. In fact his suit was nowhere to be found. He was wearing someone else’s sweatpants, lying on someone else’s sofa, covered in someone else’s blanket. But who had found him? Who had patched him up?

The dog barked once, demanding Peter’s attention. He looked over to see it hadn’t moved from its bed, eyes trained on Peter, tongue lolling. Peter knelt down holding a hand out invitingly, and the dog padded over.

“Hey, there,” Peter said, scratching the dog behind its ears. From the looks of it, it was a he, and he was intimidatingly buff. Peter gulped; one wrong move and he could lose a hand. “Good boy, good boy. If you’re here, then, uh…Where’s your owner, huh?”

“Bear! Come!”

The dog bounded away from Peter and around the couch to you, the apparent owner of both the dog and the apartment. Peter stood, assuming a defensive stance. You’d nursed his wounds, given him shelter, but he could never be too careful. You didn’t look threatening—you were still in pajamas after all, and the circles under your eyes suggested you’d been up for most of the night—but he had no doubt you could defend yourself if you needed to.

“You’re awake,” you observed, petting Bear with one hand and placing the other on your hip.

“Yeah. Um. Thank you. For helping me.”

You smiled, a real, genuine smile. It looked good on you, better than that cool, wary expression you’d entered the room with. “No problem.” With that, you were the first to move, crossing the room to the kitchenette. The dog, Bear, followed eagerly. “Want anything? I can make us breakfast.”

“Oh, that’s—you don’t have to do that—”

“It’s no trouble. I’m hungry anyway. Waffles okay?”

Peter blinked, dumbfounded. He hadn’t met anyone this hospitable in a while, and he had certainly never met anyone who’d found out he was Spider-Man and took it so…normally. “Sure.” He sat down, or rather fell backward into the couch, his exhaustion catching up to him.

He watched you as you cooked, and Bear eventually returned to the living room to lie on the couch next to him. It was almost ridiculous how sweet the dog was considering his bulk, but maybe that was why you’d adopted him in the first place. He decided not to introduce himself. You’d seen his face but he was at least going to keep his name secret. You, however, hadn’t even told him your name. He decided not to ask.

“So, Spidey,” you piped up, pouring batter into the waffle iron, “how’d you end up passed out in a dumpster? I mean, I’ve had my share of losses but you must have really gotten your ass kicked.”

Peter didn’t answer right away. It was unlikely you’d believe his explanation; he could barely believe it himself. “Lizard mutants.”

“Come again?”

He sighed. “Found some lizard mutants terrorizing some family in Central Park. I got my ass handed to me. They don’t mess around.”

Your eyes widened. “So you swung all the way here from Central Park?”

Peter nodded. “Made it pretty far until I passed out.”

“Impressive. And the lizard mutants?”

He frowned. “Still out there wreaking havoc. Soon as I’m better, I need to go put them away.”

You nodded, and then the waffle timer went off. You went to the iron to extract the waffle, using a fork to slide it onto a paper plate. “Guess you might need some reinforcements. Here, this one’s yours.”

Peter jumped up too quickly and groaned, his head throbbing. “Too fast. Okay.” He limped over to the kitchen, sliding onto one of the barstools at your kitchen counter. “Thanks.”

“Syrup? Fruit?”

“Just some syrup’ll do.” You handed him the bottle and he drizzled the contents over his plate. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You’re welcome. Now back to what I was saying. You should know that by reinforcements”—you glanced over at him as you poured more batter into the waffle iron, a wicked smile gracing your lips—“I mean me.”

Peter’s eyes went round as the plate he was eating off of. “No! No, I can’t let you do that. You’re a civilian!”

You rolled your eyes and closed the waffle iron.

“I’ve got friends who can handle it, I actually know some of the Aveng—”

Your head burst into flames, and you were completely calm about it.

Your head…was on fire.

Peter nearly fell out of his chair. “Oh, my God! Are you okay? Do you have a fire extinguish—”

“No need,” you said in a weirdly reedy voice. You shook your head, and the flames went out, leaving you entirely unscathed.

Peter was a spluttering mess, clinging to the counter for dear life; his eyes had grown even wider, if possible. “How…You’re…”

“I haven’t been a civilian in a _long_ time, bud,” you said calmly. Then, smirking, you held a hand out to him. “The name’s Inferno, but you can call me Y/N.”

Peter swallowed, staring at your proffered hand as he tried to process all that he’d seen. The Inferno—he’d heard of you, the human fireball, protecting the people of New York as a vigilante. And here you were, right in front of him. You’d tended to his injuries and let him sleep on your couch and you were actually really, really attractive—He couldn’t say no. He’d heard of what you could do; working together didn’t sound bad at all. After some thought, he took your hand and shook firmly. “Peter,” he told you. “My name is Peter.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please let me know what you think in the comments!


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